Porous Silicon Particles for Cancer Therapy and Bioimaging

Abstract

Porous silicon (pSi) engineered by electrochemical etching of silicon has been explored as a drug delivery carrier with the aim of overcoming the limitations of traditional therapies and medical treatments. pSi is biodegradable, non-cytotoxic and has optoelectronic properties that make this platform material a unique candidate for developing biomaterials for drug delivery and theranostics therapies. pSi provides new opportunities to improve existing therapies in different areas, paving the way for developing advanced theranostic nanomedicines, incorporating payloads of therapeutics with imaging capabilities. However, despite these outstanding advances, more extensive in-vivo studies are needed to assess the feasibility and reliability of this technology for real clinical practice. In this Chapter, we present an updated overview about the recent therapeutic systems based on pSi, with a critical analysis on the problems and opportunities that this technology faces as well as highlighting the growing potential of pSi technolgy.